Region 1 Genius Products (USA)
NTSC, 2.35:1 16x9 enhanced
130 minutes
Audio: DD 5.1 Chinese, DTS 5.1 Chinese, DD 5.1 English
Subtitles: Optional English, English SDH, Spanish
Extras: audio commentary by Bey Logan, Jaycee Chan, Shawn Yue, and Andy On; Orchestrated Mayhem: The Making of Invisible Target; interviews with Benny Chan, Jaycee Chan, Shawn Yue, Jacky Wu Jing, Philip Ng, Vincent Sze, and Andy On; deleted/extended scenes; A Look at the Storyboard Concepts for Invisible Target; The Gala Premiere; trailers; previews for other movies
Released: 10 June 2008
slim double keepcase with cardboard slipcover
Benny Chan seems to specialize in action movies with cool young actors, even when directing projects headlined by Jackie Chan. For Invisible Target, he re-united with Nicholas Tse (who appeared in Chan’s Gen-X Cops and New Police Story) and Andy On (who also appeared in New Police Story) as well as Jaycee Chan, Jackie’s son. Throw Shawn Yue, Andy On, and Jacky Wu Jing into the mix, and you’ve got just about all of pan-China’s sexiest and tabloidiest young studs in a balls-out brawl. (Edison Chen is still in self-imposed exile following his sex photos scandal.)
The movie begins with an armored-truck heist (the first of many references to Michael Mann’s Heat) that results in the death of a cop’s fiancée. Later, the main villain crams bullets into another cop’s mouth and forces the cop to swallow. A wild car chase leads to the hijacking of a school bus. The movie ends with a huge battle at a police station, during which time we see people fighting in a fire, hurtling grenades at each other, and Jacky Wu Jing kicking the life out of Jaycee Chan. Most of the leads (even Jaycee Chan, who isn’t a physical performer like his father) acquit themselves nicely, especially when compared to their previous appearances in action movies.
If you haven’t gotten the gist by now...yes, Invisible Target was designed to be a pure action beefcake thriller with some lip-service scenes about honor and duty. However, the impressive action sequences can’t make up for the general lack of focus or heart. This isn’t a seamless ensemble since the three cops (Tse, Yue, and Chan) and the villains seem to inhabit their own movies until they all converge in the finale.
Although the action is intense and relentless, I don’t think that the action/story ratio is lopsided. Rather, the movie is simply just way too long. There are too many expository scenes that lead nowhere, and we have to keep track of too many fight pairings during the finale. The movie doesn’t end when I thought that it had reached a natural end, which caused me to throw my hands up in the air and ask aloud, “What?”
Invisible Target is not a bad movie, but New Police Story is a better bet for most viewers.
Video:
Though set in tropical Hong Kong, the movie is not excessively bright or overly lit, which helps the 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen video transfer look quite good for an SD DVD. Detail and sharpness are high for 480p, and color hues are rich and naturalistic. On the minus side, CGI effects look very fake and sometimes even rather awful, though this isn’t something that the video compressionist could control.
Audio:
The original Chinese (mixed Cantonese and Mandarin) mix is presented in both DD 5.1 and DTS 5.1. As with most DD/DTS comparisons, the DTS track is encoded at a slightly higher volume than the DD track, though once you compensate for that discrepancy, the differences practically disappear. You get robust bass response during the movie’s many explosions, and there are plenty of rear-channel effects to tickle your ears. However, as with a lot of Hong Kong movies, the discrete speaker separations frequently feel artificial when compared to Hollywood mixes.
You can also watch the movie with a DD 5.1 English dub. Optional English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles support the audio.
Extras:
This one is another heavily-loaded DVD release in the Dragon Dynasty line. When I watch and review these editions, I almost feel like I’m back in Hong Kong again.
--Disc 1--
Upon loading, the disc plays previews for other movies.
This time around, Bey Logan is joined by Jaycee Chan, Shawn Yue, and Andy On for the expected audio commentary. Things get off to a hilarious start when Logan asks the actors to introduce themselves with their Chinese names. Logan mistakenly identifies Andy On as Nicholas Tse, so On says Tse’s Chinese name before saying his own name. A lot of the comments revolve around the chatters admiring each other, so this track is a bit less informative than other’s by Logan going solo.
“Orchestrated Mayhem: The Making of Invisible Target” is comprised primarily of talking-heads interviews.
You also get two trailers for Invisible Target.
--Disc 2--
The first extras on Disc 2 are lengthy, 20-plus-minutes interviews with Benny Chan, Jaycee Chan, Shawn Yue, Jacky Wu Jing, Philip Ng, Vincent Sze, and Andy On. The director and the actors talk generally about themselves, their participation in the movie, and each other. Some comments are surprisingly frank. For example, Jaycee Chan admits that he thought that Shawn Yue had an inflated opinion of himself until he got to know Yue during shooting.
There are several deleted/extended scenes, though as the movie is already over-long, these cuts were made for the right reasons.
“A Look at the Storyboard Concepts for Invisible Target” shows storyboards and the final product in side-by-side comparisons.
Finally, you get footage from the movie’s “Gala Premiere”.
--Miscellaneous--
The discs are kept in a slim double keepcase. You also get an insert advertising other Dragon Dynasty DVDs and a cardboard slipcover.
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